Patrick Stewart Made A Big Change To Star Trek: First Contact

Star Trek: First Contact is generally considered to be the best of the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies, but it may have turned out very differently if not for an early intercession of star Patrick Stewart.

Speaking at the Star Trek Las Vegas convention, Star Trek: First Contact writer Brannon Braga recalled that Captain Picard and Commander Riker’s roles were reversed in the original screenplay for the movie until Stewart personally asked for a change.

“We were summoned to Patrick Stewart’s apartment in New York, where he said ‘I should be battling the Borg’… so we changed it,” Braga recalled (via Trek Movie).

In the original script, it was Riker battling the Borg in space while Picard was on Earth Zefram Cochrane. In retrospect, it seems clear that Stewart had the right idea. After all, no one on the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew was more affected by the Borg than Picard, while Riker was also more of a people person than his captain.

It all worked out in the end, and Braga still looks back fondly on the finished movie.

Released in 1996 and directed by Riker himself, Jonathan Frakes, was a box office and critical success and is considered one of the highlights of the Star Trek movie series. Frakes will direct a first-season of episode Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access.

“[Star Trek: First Contact] is a great initiation for what Star Trek‘s all about,” he says. “It had to be the Borg, there was no question what we were doing for first contact. It was fun to do from beginning to end, fun to make, fun to watch, and I think it shows up on screen.”

In Star Trek: First Contact, the Enterpriseand its crew follow a Borg ship through a time warp to prevent the Borg from taking over the Earth in a past era. Stuck in the past, Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) helps a pioneer of space travel (James Cromwell) in his efforts to create the first warp drive while Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Cmdr. Data (Brent Spiner) battle the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) as she tries to take over the Enterprise.